Teddy Roosevelt

Indian warfare was of such peculiar atrocity that the employment of Indians as allies forbade any further hope of reconciliation.

They did not have many theories; but they were too genuinely liberty-loving not to keenly feel that their freedom was jeopardized as much by domestic disorder as by foreign aggression.

It was needful that justice should stand before mercy; and they could no longer have held their homes, had they not put down their foes, of every kind, with an iron hand.

The crisis demanded that they should be both strong and good; but, above all things, it demanded that they should be strong.

Nevertheless this very ferocity was not only inevitable, but it was in a certain sense proper; or, at least, even if many of its manifestations were blamable, the spirit that lay behind them was right.

Each section had its own work to do; the east won independence while the west began to conquer the continent.

From that moment our politics became national, and the fate of each portion of our country was thenceforth in some sort dependent upon the welfare of every other.

The movement which was to make the future nation a continental power was begun immediately after the hitherto separate colonies had taken the first step towards solidification.

They crossed the great divide which sundered the springs of the seaboard rivers from the sources of the western waters about the time that American citizens first publicly acted as American freemen, knit together by common ties, and with…

The great western drift of our people began almost at the moment when they became Americans, and ceased to be merely British colonists.

This last point is curious as showing how instantly and naturally the colonists succeeded not only to the lands of the Indians, but also to their habits of thought; regarding intrusion by outsiders upon their hunting-grounds with the same…

They were men of genuine force of character, and they behaved with a dignity and wisdom that would have well become any legislative body.

These weather-beaten backwoods warriors, who held their deliberations in the open air, showed that they had in them good stuff out of which to build a free government.

Their defeat gave the opportunity for Boon to settle Kentucky, and therefore for Robertson to settle Middle Tennessee, and for Clark to conquer Illinois and the Northwest; it was the first in the chain of causes that gave us for our…

It made possible the twofold character of the Revolutionary war, wherein on the one hand the Americans won by conquest and colonization new lands for their children, and on the other wrought out their national independence of the British…

Cornstalk died a grand death, but by an act of cowardly treachery on the part of his American foes; it is one of the darkest stains on the checkered pages of frontier history.

It kept the northwestern tribes quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle; and above all it rendered possible the settlement of Kentucky, and therefore the winning of the West.

For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace; but do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear.

Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children.

Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as I passed and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white man.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man.

I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not?

Their stern old chief, Cornstalk, alone remained with unshaken heart, resolute to bid defiance to his foes and to fight the war out to the bitter end.

Their immense superiority over regular troops in such contests can be readily seen when their triumph on this occasion is compared with the defeats previously suffered by Braddock's grenadiers and Grant's highlanders, at the hands of the…

The battle of the Great Kanawha was a purely American victory, for it was fought solely by the backwoodsmen themselves.

The backwoodsmen of the Alleghanies felt that the quarrel was their own; in their hearts the desire for revenge burned like a sullen flame.